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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#491

Post by q1w2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57
coldpie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, energy storage is still an unsolved problem. Research on batteries may get us there soon, but today they aren't feasible. It's very much worth putting effort into both approaches. IMO the best outcome is a wide variety of clean energy sources and storage solutions, so the best solution can be chosen for a given geographical/political/etc situation.

Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. Nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, it’s competing against batteries and almost free renewables that charge them. Nuclear is still possibly a great fit for niche locales where renewables aren’t feasible at all. Not a nuclear hater by any means (we need every innovation we can get), just show your math. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

> Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets.

This is false. This has only ever been shown to be true in extremely narrow edge cases where the batteries only needed to last overnight in extremely sunny locations.

For solar+batteries to be cheaper they need to be large enough to power through weeks/months of cloudy/snowy/leafy/rainy weather in places that are at least near higher latitude locations.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#492

Post by qayxc »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #484
qayxc wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole electricity is moving the goal post because there are plenty of other sources that primarily produce heat. There's no industrial processes that make use of plasma in the 10s of megakelvins. It's also not moving the goal post at all, since generating electricity is the literal goal of nuclear fusion. If it's just heat you're after, we've solved that problem over 70 years ago. There's hundreds if not thousa…

EUV light source generate plasma that is in the megakelvin range today for silicon lithography. It's obviously not the same and still cooler, but the assertion that we don't make use of highly energetic plasma is off. Secondly, your attempt at being pithy about nuclear bombs is a complete loss. We previously only knew how to achieve an inertial confinement based fusion reaction with a positive Q factor by first setti…

> EUV light source generate plasma that is in the megakelvin range today for silicon lithography.

Only an order of magnitude off, but yeah, physicists and spherical cows and all that.

> Secondly, your attempt at being pithy about nuclear bombs is a complete loss.

A little sense of humour is lost on so many bitter souls these days, it's kind of sad. Lighten up, mate!

> Engineering that makes no sense though if you can't get a high Q factor out of the ignition itself, hence the focus.

You do realise that the fusion reaction we're talking about lasted for less than a trillionth of a second in a miniscule area, while other practical designs are aiming for continuous operation in the half hour range to examine practical engineering challenges of particular reactor configurations?

A high Q-factor may be completely useless if the underlying concept doesn't work for actual power generation and one might be easier to achieve than the other (i.e. getting a continuously working reactor first and tweaking it to improve Qp). The question therefore becomes, what's the actual value of the result. The article doesn't even touch on that, while even some C-grade online publications provided context like that.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#493

Post by paxys »

ForgotIdAgain wrote: post #365
paxys wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For being a tech entrepreneur forum people here are strangely very anti science and technology. The top voted responses to every new product announcement are essentially "why do we need this? Pen and paper work just fine".

In my experience, the more someone has deep understanding in tech, the more they are critical of it. Especially true in my field of infosec.

Everyone is a cynic simply because cynicism is easy. Any infosec professional can go "computers are insecure, never use them". And the advice will be correct, but ultimately useless. The ones worth anything won't just point out problems but also find solutions.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#494

Post by anyfoo »

scottLobster wrote: post #480
anyfoo wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the ARPANET? That was even less of a notable Monday to the general populace, because I doubt any significant part of the public had a great interest in some universities being able to connect their at least fridge-size, expensive computers together similarly to how they were already able to do before, but now using "packets".

ARPANET was established in 1969, the internet as we know it started gaining traction in the 90s. So you're saying this "breakthrough" means we're 30 years away from the nuclear fusion equivalent of the dot-com boom? If that's true then I'm incredibly hyped, show me the data

There is no need to put “breakthrough” in quotes. For the first time since working on fusion since the 50s, we have achieved a positive gain of energy. Engineering-wise, it is a long way still until this can be put into its intended use, and who knows what roadblock scientists and engineers will hit on the way, but anyone who knows what they are talking about is suitably excited about this milestone.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#495

Post by moloch-hai »

dools wrote: post #253
e1g wrote: post #71

Good write-up to temper expectations at https://twitter.com/wilson_ricks/status/1602088153577246721 My TLDR (from a layman): * The output is greater than the energy *in the lasers*, but the lasers deliver 1% of the energy required to power them. Need 100x improvement to break even. * Converting the generated energy into electricity would cut the output in half. We need a further 2x improvement here, so it's ~200x to…

Helion tech seems to be interesting in that they use the electricity directly so avoids the costly conversion via steam/turbines etc.

It's the only one with a ghost of a chance. Still only a ghost, and the 3He supply problem looms.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#496

Post by gus_massa »

squokko wrote: post #263
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I think it's just the difference in expectations between scientists and laypeople. "Major fusion breakthrough" to a scientist could mean one step out of 200, over 3 decades, towards functional fusion power. Scientists understand the long arc of progress. But these labs need to market to the public as well who invariably end up expecting a SimCity Fusion Power Plant within 18 months.

As a scientists, I'll never classify the 200 intermediate steps as "major breakthrough". Perhaps 1 or 2 of them. Fusion looks difficult, so let's say 5 of them. All the other are just improvements, minor improvements, side quest, dead ends, easy task for a undergraduate thesis, ...

If you read "breakthrough", you can be almost sure that it's an exaggeration from the press or the marketing team of the university (and in some rare cases, from the research team).

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#497

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

paxys wrote: post #466
dsr_ wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because for 90% of new products, the old stuff performs better, uses fewer resources, and has been debugged in ways the new stuff has not. All the new stuff, however, has marketing and looks shiny.

If you are always a naysayer you will be right 90% of the time and can feel smug and pat yourself on the back for it (so, like everyone here). However, progress comes from people willing to take risks and make wild bets for the small chance that they are in the 10%.

And they will succeed around 1% of the time.

In fusion research, pessimism is realism. Especially in laser powered fusion.

This experiment is producing 2.5 MJ of output for 500 MJ of input.

Roughly once a day.

After decades of basic research.

It's a scientific breakthrough in the sense that the rocks are now being banged together hard enough to make sparks. And a little more is known about rock banging than was known ten years ago.

But it's clearly not going to be producing power on a commercial scale any time soon.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#498

Post by zamalek »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #276
billiam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now available, so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. For one thing, perhaps a lot of the research money will move to lasers now.

I mean, you nail it on the head. It's not "congrats on limitless free energy" but more "looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this." Positive indicators at milestones are good. Onward.

> looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this.

Maybe this could also open up more avenues for money.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#499

Post by smeagull »

fundatus wrote: post #459
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is simply not true. according to IEA https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el... LCOE of nuclear is cheaper than almost all other possibilities we have. sure nuclear is very expensive up front, but a nuclear powerplant can run for 100 years while wind and solar had to be completely replaced every 25 years. your correct that nuclear has had some very expensive accidents, but the chance of a mo…

> sure nuclear is very expensive up front, but a nuclear powerplant can run for 100 years while wind and solar had to be completely replaced every 25 years. Hinkley Point C is currently expected to cost around $31 billion once finished for a measly 3,000 MW. For that money you could build ~2,300 15MW onshore wind turbines - which would add up to roughly 34,500 MW capacity. So even under the assumptions that - you hav…

The cost of the land required is non-trivial.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#500

Post by wolverine876 »

nine_k wrote: post #388
paxys wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For being a tech entrepreneur forum people here are strangely very anti science and technology. The top voted responses to every new product announcement are essentially "why do we need this? Pen and paper work just fine".

Rather, very anti science and technology hype . Many visitors of this website measure experience by decades, and have seen many waves of hype resiting in not much progress in unyielding areas, from self-driving car and silver-bullet methodologies to, well, commercial fusion. When demonstrable, measure progress is achieved, visitors of this site get very excited and positive, from things like the Rust language all the…

I have plenty of experience and I don't agree that it's about hype. IMHO it's about the standard human reactionary response to something new and challenging [0], and people trying to sound smarter than something or someone by criticizing. It is disappointing.

[0] The saying is true IME: First they laugh at it (ridicule it), then they say it's not in the Bible (conflicts with the norm), then they say they believed it all along.

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